Disclosure without Reservation: Re-evaluating Divine Hiddenness

For the German Lutheran theologian Eberhard Jungel, an account of the hiddenness of God concerns one with the revelation of God, who reveals his hiddenness sub contrario in the suffering and death of Jesus. What hides God from human beings, then, is not a hidden work of God or the presence of another God behind the God revealed in the Word, but rather, the very splendour of the light and glory that God is in se. Jungel's discussion is of theological importance because he replaces a discourse on God's hiddenness which suggests a hidden God and a revealed God with a discourse concerning God who discloses his hiddenness humanly. And yet, Jungel's very positive reformulation of the account still speaks of the divinity and humanity of God in such a way that the humanity of Jesus conceals God, an emphasis which detracts from the clarity and perspicuity of God's self-disclosure as that which includes humanity in itself. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]